How to Dress for an Ugly Sweater Hanukkah Party

December always marks the arrival of loads of ugly tacky garish Christmas sweaters in department stores. So a Jewish entrepreneur asked why should Jews celebrating Hanukkah be denied the pleasure of giving ugly sweaters as gifts to friends and family? But where can you find ugly sweaters with Chanukah motifs? What to do if you're invited to an Ugly Sweater Chanukah party?

We found these questions challenging and thought-provoking, so we set about to do some research on the Internet. What we found was a sizable cult of people devoted to tracking down, buying, and wearing the ugliest sweaters that they could find and building a Christmas party around a contest for who has the ugliest of them all.

Carin Agiman of Santa Ana, California, the founder of Geltfiend.com, took the idea of designing and selling ugly Chanukah sweaters seriously and started a fundraising project on the crowdfunding website Kickstarter.com to come up with $20,000 to start producing and marketing them. Her high hopes were met when 293 backers stepped up with donations ranging from $1 to $1,000 to kick start the project.

Are the sweaters really ugly? Well, you'll have to be the judge. Check out some of the designs above and the video that was used to get investors interested. Enjoy!

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Israeli Technion Students, Inspired by Rube Goldberg, Build Menorah Lighting Contraption

 

Rube Goldberg (1883-1970) became famous for his highly detailed cartoons depicting extremely complicated contraptions that executed very simple tasks in a complex, indirect way. These contraptions came to be known as Rube Goldberg machines.

Though Goldberg spent a lot of time drawing his funny machines, he didn't actually build them. But his eye for detail and use of oddball devices were an inspiration to Mechanical and Industrial Engineering students in the Robotics Lab at the Technion in Haifa, Israel, who used his techniques to build a machine that lights the Chanukah menorah.

Thought you could do it by just striking a match and putting it next to a candle or oil wick? Why would you, when instead you could do it with helium balloons, nitroglycerin, a toy car, falling dominoes, tubes, and whatever odds and ends you could find.

Enjoy!

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(A tip of the kippah and a copy of our new eBook, Jewish Humor on Your Desktop: The Complete Collection to Sheila Zucker for bringing this video to our attention.)

Hanukkah Countdown 2012: Here Come the Music Videos

In case you haven't noticed, Chanukah will be here in just ten days. The first candle is next Saturday night. In the world of Jewish Humor Central, that means we're ready to bring you the funniest Hanukkah happenings, music videos, and a cappella groups that we can find.

For the last two years, the Fountainheads, Maccabeats, and Aish haTorah led the way with impressive musical productions. Let's see if they repeat this year, or if we're dealing with a whole new crop of talented singers and dancers.

The first video to reach us this year is Eight Nights, an a cappella parody of a few current pop songs. The singers, Yeshiva University graduates David Block, Noey Jacobson, Nachum Joel, and Immanuel Shalev. The name of the group, StandFour, is a play on words. They say that after college, they want to continue to make music that is both fun and inspiring. They believe in bringing out the meaning present in all things -- "That's what we stand for." Enjoy!

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Rita, Israel's Most Popular Singer, Builds Bridges to Iranian People with Her Farsi Music

Rita Johanfaruz, known to most Israelis by her stage name Rita, has been called Israel's most popular singer. Born in Tehran 50 years ago, Rita experienced a reawakening of her Iranian childhood last year and decided to record All My Joys, an album of songs in Farsi, the language of Persia, or Iran; songs that her mother sang to her before the family emigrated to Israel when she was eight years old.

The CD instantly topped the charts and went gold in three weeks. Now Rita is touring Israel and singing the new songs to the acclaim of her fans.

CNN recently interviewed Rita, giving her a chance to express her feelings about the relationship between the two countries whose leaders are locked in enmity but whose people share a love for her music. Rita has been getting calls, letters, emails, and Facebook messages from Iranians who buy bootleg copies of her CDs as they defy their government's ban on everything Israeli, including her music.

Here is a video of the CNN interview, followed by one of Rita's songs from the new album. Enjoy!

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A Joke to Start the Week: Looking For a Jewish Girl

It's Monday morning and time for a joke to start the week. Once again we venture into the seemingly endless collection of Old Jews Telling Jokes and come up with a real oldie retold by Harriet Sussman, a 73-year-old retired secretary.

Harriet's joke takes place on the deck of a cruise ship. Aboard the ship a dapper young man wearing a straw hat and running around like a meshuggener comes up to her and tells her that he's looking for a Jewish girl. Does she know a Jewish girl? She asks him why. You probably know the answer if you've been around old Jewish jokes as long as we have. 

So what are you waiting for? Press the play button and listen to the answer. Enjoy!

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Tumbalalaika Around the World: Yiddish Song Surfaces in Italian Movie

When we started a series a few weeks ago about the popularity of the Yiddish song Tumbalalaika we weren't sure where the road would lead as we followed the song around the world. Just like the appearance of Hava Nagila in unexpected places, this song is showing up in some surprising locales.

Today we're looking at a 2002 Italian film titled Prendimi l'anima (The Soul Keeper) by film maker Roberto Faenza about a love affair between the psychoanalyst Carl Jung and a young Russian Jewish girl, Sabina Spielrein. Here's a summary of the plot:

In 1905 a 19-year-old Russian girl suffering from severe hysteria is admitted into a psychiatric hospital in Zurich. A young doctor, Carl Gustav Jung, takes her under his care and for the first time experiments with the psychoanalytical method of his teacher, Sigmund Freud. Based on recently exposed secret correspondence between Jung, Freud and Sabina Spielrein, this true story begins with the Spielrein's healing, closely related to her passionate love affair with Jung, followed by her return to post-revolutionary Russia where she became Switzerland's first female psychoanalyst.

So what does this have to do with Tumbalalaika? Beats us. But the song is the musical background of the last five minutes of the film as it plays repeatedly in a sequence where the doctors and patients of the asylum dance to its haunting melody.

If you want to see the film, it's available for rental from Netflix. It's not rated, but does include some frontal nudity. (But not in the clip we're showing here.) Enjoy!

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A Comedy Classic: Jack Benny and Mel Blanc in "What's in a Name?"

It's not in HD color; it's black and white. The picture is grainy and the sound isn't great. But the comedy! They don't make them like this any more.

Last night we came across an old routine on the Jack Benny show that had the master of comedy interviewing prospective candidates for a talent show. Who should be the first candidate but a character named Stanley Gropff. Every time Benny pronounces his name, well, you have to see it.

The skit involves some dog imitations and shows off Gropff's talents. Of course, we know that Gropff is really Mel Blanc, who was known as the man of 1,000 voices including Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, Daffy Duck, and Yosemite Sam.

We profiled Blanc last year when he was the subject of a special exhibit at the Oregon Jewish Museum. If you missed that post, it's worth taking a look. 

Enjoy! Tha-tha-that's all, folks!

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Amazing Bottle Dancers Crash a Wedding

Bottle dancing, a highlight of the wedding scene in Fiddler on the Roof, started long before the Broadway show and Hollywood film made it popular. An Eastern European folk tradition, it was part of the culture of Hungary and other countries. And it was a feature of many Jewish weddings in Europe. But Fiddler brought the dance home to American audiences in a uniquely Jewish way.

Michael Pasternak, who comes from a line of rabbis and cantors, owned a production company that created exciting sales meetings and events. He wanted a unique way to make his own wedding special, so he came up with the idea of staging a traditional Hasidic bottle dance in the middle of a modern wedding. Soon he was getting calls asking for a similar performance at other weddings, Bar and Bat Mitzvahs, and other occasions. Before long, the Amazing Bottle Dancers were born.

Michael has since perfected the bottle dance performance as a surprise feature of these events, with only the sponsors aware of the shtick that is about to happen in the middle of the event. Typically, a Hasid mistakenly wanders into the ballroom seemingly confused about where he is going, starts a dialogue with the sponsor or master of ceremonies, and then the fun begins.

They perform their shtick with sensitivity to tradition. Their website says:

Having been founded by someone with such a rich family history, we are certainly aware that if you are planning an ORTHODOX simcha, you may be having a mechitzah, or perhaps just a "ceremonial" separation of the dancing for men and women (such as a few strategically-placed potted plants or trees). And our performers, of course, are fully aware that they must not extend a hand to any of the women in attendance.

Additionally, if you're planning a kiddush luncheon following your Bar or Bat Mitzvah and will not be having recorded music, we can discuss a program featuring a capella singers.

Here's a video showing a typical performance of the Amazing Bottle Dancers.  Enjoy!

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 (A tip of the kippah and a copy of "Jewish Humor on Your Desktop: The Complete Collection" to Phoebe Weisbrot for bringing this video to our attention.)
 

Ladino Comes Alive in the Song Stylings of Mor Karbasi

Ladino, or Judeo-Spanish, was the language of the Sephardic Jews, similar to the way Yiddish was the language of the Eastern European Jews. It is influenced heavily by Hebrew and Aramaic, but also Arabic, Turkish, and to a lesser extent Greek and other languages where Sephardic exiles settled around the world, primarily throughout the Ottoman Empire.

Like many other Jewish languages, Judeo-Spanish is in danger of language extinction. Most native speakers are elderly, many of them having emigrated to Israel where the language was not transmitted to their children or grandchildren. However, it is experiencing a minor revival among Sephardic communities, especially in music.

Mor Karbasi, a second generation Israeli, is keeping Ladino alive in her singing performances and popular recordings. Her haunting melodies are based on the songs she learned from her grandfather, who grew up in Morocco and now lives in Nazareth.

In this video, Karbasi sings La Hija de la Primavera (The Daughter of Spring) in Ladino. Just below, we're sharing a short interview with Karbasi, in which she talks about her love for Israel and her Jewish identity, her roots in Morocco, the origins of Ladino, and how she and her mother write the words and music of piyutim (liturgical poems based on religious texts) that she sings in Ladino. Enjoy!

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"Deli Man" Documentary - A Mouth-Watering Tribute to Eastern European Jewish Cooking

Erik Greenberg Anjou, director of two acclaimed documentaries focusing on the life of a cantor (A Cantor's Tale) and klezmer musicians (The Klezmatics on Holy Ground) is at it again. This new film will complete his trilogy on Jewish life. It's called Deli Man, and will be released very soon.  It's a film that's sure to spark your appetite, and it's all about pastrami, corned beef, matzo balls, and all the tasty foods that surround you in a traditional Jewish delicatessen.

The film is in the final stages of production, with support in the form of a seed grant from the Hartley Foundation. Here is a description and preview of the film from their web site:

What makes a Jew?  In the oft-quoted rabbinic source “Ethics of the Fathers,” the three pillars of Judaism are earmarked as prayer, study, and gemilut hasidim, or acts of loving kindness.  But there’s a fourth pillar – Food. 

A tender cut of corned beef steeped in its juices.  A full-bodied garlic pickle.  Spicy brown mustard with grain.  A blintz that melts in your mouth like a creamsicle on a summer’s day.   Recipes and culinary garnishes from Hungary, Poland, Russia, and Romania that flowed in to late 19^th and early 20^th century America and soon became part of an American culinary and cultural vernacular – Deli…

The center and principal guide of Deli Man, the third in a trilogy of documentaries by Erik Greenberg Anjou, will be the effusive and charming Ziggy Gruber, a third-generation delicatessen man, owner and maven, as well as Yiddish-speaking French-trained chef, who currently operates one of the country’s most popular, and delicious delis, Kenney and Ziggy’s in Houston.  ‘Texas?’ you ask.  Shalom, y’all.

Here's a 12 minute sample of what's coming when the full documentary is released. Watch for cameo appearances by Alan Dershowitz, Larry King, Jerry Stiller, and Fyvush Finkel. Enjoy!

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(A tip of the kippah and a copy of "Jewish Humor on Your Desktop: The Complete Collection" to Toni for bringing this video to our attention.)

A Joke to Start the Week: Victor Borge and His Barber

Long before there was Old Jews Telling Jokes, there was The Funniest Joke I Ever Heard, a pair of 1984 television specials co-produced by Dick Clark and broadcast on ABC, in which celebrities shared their favorite joke.

A celebrity featured on the show was one of our favorite comedians, Victor Borge (1909-2000), the pianist, composer, songwriter, entertainer and actor. Born Borge Rosenbaum, he was educated at the Conservatory of Copenhagen. His hilarious performances and antics at the piano in his one-man show Comedy in Music earned him the title of Clown Prince of Denmark.

In this video from The Funniest Joke I Ever Heard, Victor Borge tells of a funny encounter with Mr. Schwartz, his barber in Denmark. Enjoy!

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Announcing "Jewish Humor on Your Desktop": The Best of Jewish Humor Central in 7 New eBooks and Lectures

A Message from the Blogger-in-Chief:

After more than three years and 957 blog posts, Jewish Humor Central is expanding into new areas: eBooks and lectures.

The blog is not changing. It will continue with a new post every day except Shabbat and Jewish holidays, covering the usual mix of jokes, funny happenings, music videos, holiday humor, and Yiddishe nachas, usually connected to a video clip. And there will continue to be no charge for subscribing. No cost, no obligation, no spam.

Today I'm announcing a new series of seven eBooks titled Jewish Humor on Your Desktop. They are based on the best of Jewish Humor Central blog posts from the last three years. I selected more than 400 of the funniest and most interesting posts and associated videos and organized them by category. They fit into the following groups:

Volume 1: Old Jokes and New Comedians
Volume 2: Israel is a Funny Country
Volume 3: Humor in Jewish Life (You Can't Make This Stuff Up)
Volume 4: Jewish Traces in Unexpected Places
Volume 5: Yiddish is a Funny Language
Volume 6: Jewish Holiday Hilarity
Volume 7: Yiddishe Nachas

All seven eBooks are available for purchase at Amazon.com at $2.99 each.

The complete collection is available in one volume for $9.99, including more than 400 anecdotes and back stories, and more than 20 hours of links to video clips on the Internet.

They can be read on the iPad, iPhone, iTouch, Kindle Fire and Kindle Fire HD, BlackBerry, Android SmartPhones, and desktop PCs and Macs. You will need a Kindle Reader for your device, downloadable free from Amazon.com.

You can view the table of contents of each volume and download a free sample from the book listings on Amazon.com.   

So you may want to ask: “Why a book?” and “Why now?

The nature of a blog is that the many posts (now approaching 1,000) appear and are quickly displaced by new posts. Of course, if you want to take the time to search the archives and keywords on the Jewish Humor Central site, you can find any post going back to the first one.

The rapid growth and acceptance of tablets and smartphones offered an opportunity to organize the best posts by category, present them with direct links to the videos and make them available to a wide audience at a very low price. With Jewish Humor on Your Desktop, you will be able to put your finger on a favorite post and add a touch of fun to your day wherever you happen to be.

In 2013, I will be delivering lectures on Jewish humor at synagogues, Jewish Community Centers, and other locations. If you are interested in booking a presentation on the general topic of Jewish Humor on Your Desktop or on any of the topics covered in the volumes of the series, you can reach me by e-mail at akustan at gmail.com or by phone at 201-796-9273.

I hope you find the books entertaining and a source for sharing funny jokes, anecdotes, and incidents with your circle of family and friends. They should make good gifts for Hanukkah and other occasions.  

Thanks for your support and encouragement in reading and commenting on Jewish Humor Central posts each day. 

Al Kustanowitz

Rita Rudner: As Funny in Interview as She is on Stage

Rita Rudner is one of our favorite comedians, as we mentioned in a blog post in January 2011. She is one of the rare comedians who can keep an audience laughing without resorting to words that keep the radio and TV bleepers busy all the time.

We discovered that Rita is as funny when being interviewed as she is when doing a stand-up routine in her home base of Las Vegas or in appearances around the country.

We caught up with her in an interview with Conn Jackson in January. He interweaves his questions for Rita with short video clips of her performing on stage. Her clipped, witty answers are reflective of her comedy style, or is it the other way around? Either way, we hope you'll laugh as we did.

Enjoy!

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11-Year-Old Piano Virtuoso Plays My Yiddishe Mama

When Ethan Bortnick was 8 years old, he was already being acclaimed as a piano virtuoso, and appeared wih all the popular TV hosts, including Jay Leno, Oprah Winfrey, and Martha Stewart.

This past September, now 11 years old, Ethan was a featured performer on the annual Chabad Telethon. Introduced by Larry King, Ethan plays and sings the classsic Yiddish song My Yiddishe Mama.

First we share Ethan's promotional video, made when he was eight, followed by his September perfomance on the Chabad Telethon.  Enjoy!

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EXCLUSIVE On-Site Report! Best In Show and Unusual New Products From Kosherfest 2012

Glatt kosher b facon, energy ballz, pareve chocolate peanut butter gelato, Passover granola, gefilte fish with pieces of carrot mixed in, and fish salami and franks.

These are some of the prize winning and unusual products on display yesterday and today for the thousands of visitors representing all aspects of the food industry at Kosherfest 2012 at the Meadowlands Exposition Center in Secaucus, New Jersey.
 

More than 325 exhibitors lining both sides of seven aisles are vying  for the attention of visitors (trade only -- but some kiddush aficionados seem to have found their way into the hall) who try to manage noshing and stuffing literature into the bags provided by some vendors.  And there's plenty to nosh and to stuff.  

Some of the samples are meat, some are dairy, and some are pareve.  But all three types are scattered around the show floor, so anyone trying to keep kosher has to make careful choices.

The vendors are hoping that visitors will make bulk purchases, and some of the newer, smaller, and foreign companies exhibiting for the first time are hoping to find distributors who will bring their wares to your local supermarket.

If you love kiddush, can make a case for being in some kind of food-related business, have a few hours to spare and don't mind walking half a mile to a parking lot, this is the place for you.  It's still open all day today, Wednesday, from 10 am to 4 pm.  The on-site registration fee is $80.

We interviewed a few of the exhibitors and got closeups of some of the more unusual delicacies in this video for you to savor.  Enjoy!

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A Bold, Energetic Performance of Hava Nagila

Since starting Jewish Humor Central three years ago, we have brought you 25 different versions of Hava Nagila performed all over the world. Sometimes it seems that this is the most overperformed song in the world. Yet we continue to marvel at the new and different interpretations given by singers and dancers in predictable and unpredictable places.

Just a few days ago, a new sensual, energetic version appeared on the Internet, sung and danced by Georgian pop stars Anri Jokhadze and Veriko Turashvili. It moves very fast, and it's hard to read the signs in the background, but it appears to have been recorded in the streets of Jerusalem, inclucding the Old City, and also on the beach in Tel Aviv.

We think it would make a great advertisement for Israeli tourism, and we hope that the Tourism Ministry sees it and uses it to pull in more visitors.

Enjoy! 

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A Joke to Start the Week: Aunt Malka and the Photo Refinisher

It's Monday morning. Time to start the work week with another old joke. Today we dip into the Old Jews Telling Jokes barrel and come up with an old gem from Suzanne Shepherd, a 78-year-old actress who played a role in the movie Goodfellas and played Carmela Soprano's mother in The Sopranos series on TV.

Suzanne reminisces about her Aunt Malka who had a logical conversation with a photo refinisher.

Enjoy!

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The Chasidic Stand-up Comedy of Mendy Pellin

Back in 2010 we profiled Mendy Pellin, then a 27-year-old full bearded chasidic host of the Mendy Report on chabadtube.com. Since then, Mendy has appeared on TV and in the movies.

In April he ventured into the world of stand-up comedy, debuting his Shalom Bayis tour at the Millennium Theater in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn.

In his routine, Mendy talks about baby sitters and the different routines men and women use in getting dressed for a night out.

(A note for anyone who doesn't understand Yiddish: A kapoteh is the long black coat worn by Chasidim and a gartel is a black sash worn during prayer.)

Enjoy!


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Synagogue Sings for Parshat Noach: "There's Gonna be a Floody Floody"

A few weeks ago, when Hurricane Sandy was just forming in the Caribbean and when the parshat hashavua (Torah portion of the week) was the story of Noah, Cantor Angela Buchdahl of the Central Synagogue in New York City came up with a novel way of getting the congregation involved. (The Central Synagogue is a flagship synagogue of the Reform movement with over 6,500 members.)

She linked the story of the flood with the redemption of the Israelites after they passed through the Red Sea after leaving Egypt, leading the congregation in singing Mi Chamocha, a part of the Shabbat service that immediately precedes the Amidah, or Shemona Esrei.

But how to connect the two musically? What melody to use for Mi Chamocha? What better melody than the one whose lyrics usually proclaim:

The Lord said to Noah, there's gonna be a floody floody.
The Lord said to Noah, there's gonna be a floody floody.
Get those children out of the muddy, muddy.
Children of the Lord.
Rise and shine, and give God your glory glory.....

Cantor Angela Buchdahl is the first Asian ordained as both a Rabbi and a Cantor in the United States. Her mother was a Korean and her dad was an American.  She was brought up Jewish and embraced the religion.

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Cantor Buchdahl was featured on the PBS program, "Know Your Roots." Here is a brief video clip from the program.

Watch Not Just a Part of My DNA on PBS. See more from Finding Your Roots.

 

You can see and hear her singing a very moving Kol Nidrei by clicking here.

Angela Warnick Buchdahl was born in Seoul, Korea to a Jewish American father and a Korean Buddhist mother. Rabbi/Cantor Buchdahl was invested as a cantor in 1999 and also ordained as a rabbi in 2001 from the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR) in New York, where she was a Wexner Graduate fellow. She earned a BA in Religious Studies from Yale University in 1994.

She has been nationally recognized for her innovations in liturgical transformation. She was named one of the 50 Most Influential Rabbis in America by Newsweek Magazine. Buchdahl and her husband Jacob Buchdahl live in New York City and have three children.
 
(A tip of the kippah to Laura Strauss for bringing this video to our attention.)